United States presidential election, 1896

The United States presidential election, 1896 was held on 3 November 1896. The campaign saw the Republican Party presidential nominee William McKinley and his running mate Garret Hobart forge a conservative coalition with businessmen, professionals, skilled factory workers, and prosperous farmers, running against the Democratic Party ticket of William Jennings Bryan and Arthur Sewall, who supported bimetallism and a crusade by the poor against the rich. Bryan was strongest in the American South, the rural Midwest, and the Rockies, but his moralistic rhetoric and crusade for alienation alienated conservative voters. The Republicans won the election with 271 electoral votes to Bryan's 176 votes, and the election saw the Republicans become a conservative party, while the Democrats came to represent liberalism.